


The Year of Our Lives

by ladyblack888 (888mph)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Blackcest, F/F, F/M, Incest, Mildly Dubious Consent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-09
Updated: 2013-03-09
Packaged: 2017-12-04 17:43:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/713346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/888mph/pseuds/ladyblack888
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bellatrix's hair is so dark, it seems to swallow all colour, while Andromeda's black hair reflects the light and shines, nearly as luminous as Narcissa's.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Year of Our Lives

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kethlenda](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=kethlenda).



> Originally written on December, 2006.

**Winter**  
Bellatrix knows that some people think they're twins at first glance. They notice the grey of their eyes, the black of their hair and the paleness of their skin. But they never notice the little things: how Bellatrix has Mother's chin and Andromeda Father's cheekbones.  
They never notice how Bellatrix's hair is so dark, it seems to swallow all colour, while Andromeda's black hair reflects the light and shines, nearly as luminous as Narcissa's. 

They're nothing alike: Only warped reflections of what they'd be if they were indeed twins, if Andromeda hadn't waited ten months to arrive. 

Narcissa braided Bellatrix's hair for the New Year party, letting some of the heavy strands frame her face on purpose. Andromeda's hair is her greatest pride and she likes to use it loose and at its best, so usually Narcissa combs it for what seems forever, making it shine. 

After dinner, and before midnight, Father lets them go to the library, away from the rest of the family. Narcissa decides to stay, claiming that their older relatives are more interesting than her sisters, but Bellatrix and Andromeda go, laughing and drinking firewhisky. 

Bellatrix thinks it's good that great-aunt Callidora is finally getting her dye charm right, that her hair is now powder blue and not bright violet like it used to be, yet Andromeda thinks the violet was more amusing. 

But when she says that aunt Lucretia shouldn't wear her back bare after she lost so much weight, that the loose skin hanging from her shoulder blades makes her look like she has bat wings, Andromeda laughs so hard she ends up snorting firewhisky through her nose.  
It must have stung and Andromeda swears she will never let it happen to her again (but how amusing it would be if they could trick at least Narcissa into it). Bellatrix laughs and Andromeda backs away slowly until she's trapped in a corner, mock pouting.  
Bellatrix stands up, the firewhisky making her lazy, the distances longer, but she feels that her sister is just there, that she can catch her easily, like when they were children playing outside. 

Only when she's barely an inch away from Andromeda, when Andromeda grabs the strap of Bellatrix's dress and pulls, does Bellatrix realise that she wasn't prey but bait in a trap.

 **Spring**  
Outside, flowers bloom, trees have new leaves, and Andromeda falls ill.  
Mother decides that the House-Elves should clean her bedroom at least twice a day and Father lets her have her meals in bed, instead of sitting straight in a chair, still too young after Hogwarts to be allowed to speak at dinner.

A small House-Elf, whose name she never remembers, runs upstairs, trying to balance a glass of pumpkin juice on a silver tray.  
Bellatrix thinks that sometimes Andromeda forgets she's just the middle child. And between cleaning her room, serving her meals and satisfying her every whim, the House-Elves have little time left. She climbs the stairs slowly and waits for the Elf to leave Andromeda's room before walking inside. When Andromeda sees her, she screams, hiding her face in the bedsheets, one hand trying to hold her hair gone dirty. 

'Go away!' she cries. 'I don't want you to see me like this!' 

Bellatrix wants to tell Andromeda to stop with that nonsense, that hay fever is hardly a death sentence, but Andromeda keeps screaming until her eyes go wide and her voice goes silent. Bellatrix backs away, watching in horror as her sister's already swollen face turns blue. Panicked, she runs downstairs, shouting for help. 

For five hours, Narcissa and Bellatrix wait for Mother and Father to return from St. Mungo's with Andromeda, but when they do they are alone. 

'The Healers say it's better if she stays for a couple of weeks,' Mother says. No more questions are asked. 

Narcissa looks worried, but Bellatrix knows no one needs to stay in St. Mungo's for two weeks because of an asthma crisis. She knows that it's Spring, knows that there will be social gatherings in the family gardens, and knows that it is far more convenient to give the hospital a generous benefaction, let them care for the sick one.

Silently, she wishes she had hexed Narcissa when she arrived last night. Hexed her for using the pretentious perfume her pretentious fiancé gave her, and poisoning Andromeda's air with its pastoral stench.

 **Summer**  
There are secret passages and places in the attic. Nothing the builders of centuries past did on purpose, but areas behind old boxes and rotten furniture, which the House-Elves have stashed as close to the trapdoor as possible. Soon everybody seemed to have forgotten the actual size of the attic. 

One of those areas is directly under a skylight in the southwestern part of the house. It hadn't been hard to bribe a House-Elf into cleaning it and keeping secret of the place where they went to catch some sun. They would lie there for hours, trying to emulate the other girls - the ones with more mundane parents - who would arrive at Hogwarts tanned and healthy-looking.  
Narcissa soon considered it vulgar, but now, even after leaving Hogwarts, Bellatrix and Andromeda still spend every summer morning lying on the floor under the window, getting sunburned instead of tanned. 

Andromeda is lying naked in the sunlight, the swaying branches of a large tree outside casting obscene shadows on her too pale skin. Her right arm is thrown over her eyes, shielding them from the harsh glare, her hair carefully displayed around her head so it won't get tangled. 

She looks to be asleep when Bellatrix crawls near, stopping between her legs. The hollow between Andromeda's hipbone and her thigh is deep, the skin stretched and covered in sweat. It's like a bowl, and Bellatrix wonders if she could survive just from licking her sister's skin. 

When she does, Andromeda's gasp tells her she is awake, and Bellatrix grasps her hips, licking lower.  
Andromeda jerks, her right arm still over her eyes but her left pushing Bellatrix away. She tries to back away, to crawl away, but Bellatrix holds on, because when hasn't Andromeda tried to run away?  
She only stops when Andromeda gasps one last time, her arm finally falling and striking the floor. 

Bellatrix sits back and studies her: Andromeda's body is flushed, her hair framing her face in wild strands like Slytherin snakes, but Andromeda turns her stone gaze to the other side. 

**Fall**  
With the students away to Hogwarts, Diagon Alley is actually very pleasant, but Narcissa doesn't agree. She dislikes fall. It doesn't suit them, she says. Only people with auburn hair and eyes the colour of dried leaves look good during fall.  
Their season is winter: Narcissa looks perfect, very ton-sûr-ton, and Bellatrix and Andromeda make a lovely contrast with their dark hair. Bellatrix actually stops to look at her in disbelief and Andromeda laughs out loud, patting Narcissa playfully on the back. 

The three of them had planned an afternoon shopping, but halfway through their journey Andromeda sees some of her friends. She merely waves Bellatrix and Narcissa goodbye, without a word, and walks away, patting her hair vainly. 

Narcissa shrugs and walks to Madam Malkin's, but Bellatrix watches Andromeda: She recognises some of her friends as not having been Slytherins. She even recognises one as being a Mudblood.  
But Bellatrix also recognises the way Andromeda moves around him, hunter disguised as hunted. 

At night Bellatrix is trying to sleep, but Andromeda slides into her bed, skin whispering against skin.

 **Winter**  
The atmosphere in the library is heavy. Bellatrix can feel Andromeda's eyes piercing her back. Narcissa is there, too, somewhere; it's amazing how when one doesn't want to be noticed, their presence becomes stronger. 

They have been fighting the entire day: About their acquaintances, their friends, their relatives. There's something frail about to shatter between them, like a glass wall, and Bellatrix is afraid that what she'll see behind it is something too different (or too much alike). 

'You're the most Slytherin of us all, like it or not,' she says. 'Slytherins are usually just ambitious. But you're greedy, Andromeda. You don't want a lot: You want it all.' 

Narcissa's cry comes first. Bellatrix turns just in time to see Andromeda running to her, a knife she pulled out of nowhere in her hand. Bellatrix closes her eyes. She doesn't have time to do anything else, but she has time enough in her mind to think it's stupid and cowardly that she's just closing her eyes and waiting passively to feel the stab. That the time in one's mind is never the same as the time in the physical plane. 

Yet the stab doesn't come. 

Instead, when she finally opens them, she sees Andromeda running away holding Bellatrix's braid.  
Andromeda has cut her hair.  
Bellatrix runs after her, up the stairs, until Andromeda locks herself inside her bedroom.  
She starts to aim curses at the door, because right now she can't remember how to lift the wards in her sister's room and she just wants to stop the hysterical laughter coming from inside.  
Bellatrix can feel something prickling her neck. 

'Bella, stop!'

Bellatrix turns to Narcissa and the look in her eyes suddenly reminds her why when they were little and Narcissa would break something, she always managed to have Bellatrix and Andromeda punished for it. 

'If you weren't so excited, you'd have noticed that your hair grew back.' A pause and a smile, softer. 'Come to my room, I'll braid it again for you.' 

Bellatrix follows her numbly, even when she knows Andromeda hears them. 

Narcissa has just started to comb her hair silently, when they hear someone opening the front door. 

'Please stay here,' she says, but Bellatrix only waits a little after Narcissa leaves the room and goes to watch, hidden by a shadow near the banister. 

'Where do you think you're going?' 

Andromeda has her back to the stairs. She's wearing her cloak, the hood covering her head. 

'Out,' she says. 

'What? Mother and Father arrive tonight.' 

'And?' 

'Andromeda, it's one thing to threaten the House Elves to not say anything, the other is to Mother and Father arriving without you being here!' 

Andromeda shrugs and before Narcissa has time to say anything else, she grabs her hand and kisses what Bellatrix thinks (hopes) it's her cheek. 

Bellatrix runs to her room; she's going to get her cloak and go after that selfish brat and finally put some sense into her thick skull.  
But she stops inside. 

There's a braid lying on her bed and Bellatrix is suddenly confused.  
Until it catches the light coming from the door and she realises it's too thick and not dark enough to be her hair.

Like a broken chain, the braid made of Andromeda's beloved hair lies on her pillow, and Bellatrix knows it's useless to go after Andromeda, just as she knows her sister: Andromeda left.


End file.
